


After the Time War

by emeraldswan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Did I Mention Angst?, Gen, Right after the Time War, Thoughts of Sucide (sorta)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 05:17:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldswan/pseuds/emeraldswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glimpse at the Doctor after the Time War, but before he took a shop girl's hand and smiled and told her to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Time War

The silence ate at him a little more every day. There was nothing - no one - left, and there would be no changing that. He was forever alone now, with only their ghosts to keep him company. Memories, the sweet and the sour, haunted his waking hours. Forget about nightmares, a bitter voice taunted him, he would first have to sleep in order to enter that torturous level of hell. As it was, he kept himself moving until that last possible moment, that point in time when there was nothing else for it. Only then did darkness drag him under, only then did his body find rest. Only then, too tired to dream - or to remember dreaming - would he float mindlessly away from his pain. He always came back to himself, hours, days, months later with a scream dying unheard on his lips even as he pushed himself up and into motion once more. 

Forever alone, forever moving, he traveled from planet to planet, involving himself in the most foolhardy schemes imaginable, his very existence daring fate to simply _put him out of his misery_. He could, he decided as he watched Gallifrey burn behind closed eyelids for the millionth time, burn with them. Separate, forever separate from them, he could burn all the same. He only had so many regenerations left, after all. One day here, two there, and the remainder of thirteen lives could be spent in the blink of an eye. Death was better than the silence of his existence. It had to be.

The alternative, an eternity of lonely, empty **silence** . . . that was a thought too dark for him to shoulder. 

 

end

**Author's Note:**

> Because our first glimpse of the Doctor after that horrific war that ripped him up and broke both his hearts was when he had healed quite a lot (though no where near healed, he was on the way there), and then he met Rose. I, personally, grew to eventually dislike Rose a bit, but right there at the beginning? Oh, she was perfect. Exactly what he needed. This little ficlet was a character study of the Doctor, after the Time War, but before Rose. A shattered man with severely jagged edges, alone and needing something he doesn't know how to find. That is a Doctor rarely explored. This was my shot at it. I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> Also, not mine. Sigh. If the Doctor was mine . . . but again, sigh. Not mine. 
> 
> Smiles, Emeraldswan


End file.
